Monthly Archives: April 2008

The Mania Spreads

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As expected, more Trackmania servers popped up tonight, so I spent most of the evening racing around on them. They’ve apparently bumped up the server capacity a lot, as the first server I was on often had 130-140 people on it, and I’ve heard reports of others with 200+. Though there’s no collisions between players, races can still become confusing with that many people around and blocking your view. Fortunately there’s an option to shut off other players’ cars entirely, so you just see the chat and final scores at the end of the round.

With that many players around, many of whom were fairly experienced, I didn’t come anywhere close to winning, but I was usually in the upper quartile. I think the highest I ever placed was 7th.

The popular servers were just the Stadium environment though, since that’s the only one available to users of the free client. I’ll probably get sick of that before too long and then I’ll have to seek out United servers with the other settings. Hopefully there’ll be a decent number of them…

Traffic seems a bit heavy today…

…resulting in a bit of road rage.

Hopefully Forever Won’t Be Too Short

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The ‘Forever’ patch for Trackmania United was released today, at a surprising size of 900 megs. It does change a fair bit though, with a new menu interface, revamped graphics in a few of the environments, new tracks, and some new track builder pieces. And perhaps best of all, it removes the CD check and Starforce, so I don’t need to keep the disc around for whenever I get the whim to play.

I did a bunch of the new tracks, but they were mainly easier ones, meant as tutorials for new players. Looking ahead to the tougher tracks though, the unlocking requirements get pretty steep, requiring things like getting all golds on all previous tracks. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach that point…

Not many servers are up yet, but it was just released, so it’ll take time for people to get it and start up more servers. Hopefully…

Time To Flee

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I resumed Suikoden V in the ‘town’ of Raftfleet, where I upgraded my armour, met the admiral that ran the town (who turned out to be another friend of Sialeeds’), and turned over the troublemakers.

Upon returning to Sol-Falena, the queen got all gushy about how my sister and I were growing up, and then Gizel arrived and the betrothal party was held. After leaving the party, there was some more scheming by Gizel, and I found myself attacked by assassins. I then ran into Gizel’s gladiator from the Sacred Games and was forced into losing the fight against him, but another Knight and gladiator showed up to rescue me. However, I learned that the queen and king were now dead, and everyone thought it best to flee. A bunch of cutscenes showed that my sister was still safe, at least.

I made my way to Lunas and talked to the oracle there, but had to flee again as a search party was approaching. I headed to Haud Village, in the territory of the other house that had been competing for the princess, and it was a rather…gaudy town overrun with crazy artists. There I met an officer of the House of Barows who then took me the rest of the way to meet the Barows family.

The head of the Barows house and his son are still as slimy as they were when we first met them, but they’re at least friendly, and I was introduced to his lovely daughter, who is a likely love interest for the prince. We were once again followed and attacked by Gizel’s troops though, and I saved for the night just before the first strategy battle of the game.

I Still Haven’t Even Tried All The Cars Yet

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I also got in a handful of Forza 2 races today with some other forum members. Results were mixed, with a couple wins, a couple last-places, and everything in between. I just wish I could do it more often since I don’t really know that many people with it.

In a break between sessions, I watched a bit of other races on Forza TV.

Classy! Fortunately, it was canceled out by an all-Countach league race around Silverstone for 50 laps. I was wondering what in the world was going on at first since they were just crawling around the track at barely even half-speed until I realized that duh, they were doing their own recon lap and rolling start…

Restoring Hell To Its Rightful Infernalness

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I was stuck where I last left off in Sam & Max, but got unstuck today when I tried shooting Jurgen’s Monster and got things rolling again. That led to freeing Grampa Stinky, and then I was able to free Bosco and the Desoto, though I had to look up the nitrous puzzle solution (it wasn’t exactly intuitive). And finally I got the right combination on the toy, freeing Santa and his elf, and finishing off all of the dioramas.

Unfortunately, this got Sam sent to his own personal hell, with Peepers from the Soda Poppers replacing Max as his sidekick, causing much anguish. Getting out was fairly simple though, and after confronting Satan again, the big secret behind who really runs hell was revealed, and Satan gets fired.

We had to stop *them* now, as they tried to carry out their strange-but-nefarious plan in three different locations, involving a fiddling contest, seducing Sybil, and tempting Girl Stinky. Stopping them required breaking up a rather disturbing bachelor party for Lincoln’s Head, but was mostly just a matter of finding the right object for each spot.

Now that they were really mad, they banished both Sam and Max to a flaming lake, but here it crossed over with a previous episode again and they immediately escaped, since technically we already performed that escape in the other episode. That led to the final confrontation in a now-rather-frosty office of Hell, but this ending bit was fairly easy.

The wedding takes place, Satan gets his job back as head of Hell, and all is uh, well, I guess. OR IS IT? Well, probably not, whenever Sam & Max are involved.

This Isn’t What I Expected When They Said The Game Was About Dilemmas

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There’s a new patch out for The Witcher. It’s not the huge one they promised that will rework the English dialogue and improve the engine though, this one just adds one new quest module, the editor, and some other minor fixes. But, according to the patch notes, they recommend that you restart the game due to expected glitches and other incompatibilities with current save games. Whoops.

I didn’t intend to apply this patch anyway since I’m waiting for the big one, but unfortunately the same thing will probably also apply to it. So, at this point, I have to decide whether to go on and finish the game as it is right now anyway, or to wait and get all the improvements but have to restart and redo the first three chapters all over again. Argh.

Hell Really Is Other People

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The final Season 2 episode of Sam & Max was released today, continuing on from the cliffhanger at the end of the last one. I have to get Bosco’s soul back, and it’s going to take a little trip to Hell to do so…

Hell is apparently a rather placid-but-dull office building, where I encountered some of the villains I’d defeated so far, like Hugh Bliss and Jurgen the vampire (now working reception). In the back I found a room honouring Sam & Max, who unsurprisingly apparently contribute more than their fair share to the soul collection process. There, I found some dioramas containing the personal hells of a few other people I’d met, including Santa, Grampa Stinky, the old Desoto (apparently cars have souls, who knew), and Bosco, and could enter each of them.

I obviously have to help them out somehow, and I’ve collected a few items, but I’m a bit stumped at the moment as to what to do next. Being the last episode for a while, I’d prefer not to have to resort to a walkthrough for this one. The humour is pretty good so far though, with plenty of chuckle-worthy quips.

(I also couldn’t resist ordering some more S&M merchandise, including the new DVD collection of the animated episodes, and the reprint of Surfin’ The Highway, since it has some new material. Yeah, I’m a fanboy…)

How Come I Don’t Get Purified?

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Suikoden V left off with me returning back to the main city after the Sacred Games, where I upgraded my weapons, met the new rune vendor, and then got sent off yet again, this time on a trek to go through some more ceremonial bits for my sister’s engagement.

The first stop was the East Palace, for the ritual of the Dawn Rune, even though the rune has been missing for two years. Here we ran into a creepy woman in black who disappeared into thin air, though we’ll undoubtedly be seeing her again, of course.

Then it was off to the north for a bit to the town of Lunas, for the purification ritual, which apparently consists of some kind of bath where only the women are allowed… Here I also learned some more about the politics behind the current queen’s ascension to the throne, and caught a couple of strangers trying to steal gold dust from the river.

After the ritual we were then headed far to the south to Raftfleet, where the thieves originated from. I did some grinding for a while before entering it since I felt a bit low on cash. It didn’t do much for my xp, though; the experience curve drops off so quickly that there hasn’t been much point in grinding for levels so far since you earn very little xp per fight before too long.

I saved for the night once inside Raftfleet, though not before running into a beaver-girl (each installment seems to have at least one morphic type, like III’s duck-people and IV’s cat-people), though her short, squat, and yellow appearance made her look more like a Pikachu, really…

You Have To Be Dedicated To Figure It Out

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After some more experimenting, I still can’t get the GTR2 dedicated server to work properly, and there aren’t even any useful logs or error messages. I’ve opened up the necessary ports, I’ve tried with the firewall off, with and without admin rights, installed to a separate directory, using a different profile name… Argh!

Oddly enough though, RACE 07’s dedicated server works just fine, and it’s pretty much the same engine behind it. It’s the one less likely to be preferred by other sim racers I might be talking to, though. I still have to try rFactor, though…

Running Out Of Gas

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I played a bit more TrackMania United tonight, finishing off a bunch of levels imported from the older TM:Sunrise game. I went online for a bit and found a US server with seven people on it, but it soon dropped down to only four, and they were kicking my ass anyway, so I called it off there.

I also tried to get the dedicated servers of GTR2 and GT Legends working, but I’m not sure what’s wrong. The server runs, the client can see it in the browser, but I can’t connect to it when it’s on the same machine. I’ll have to try installing it on the MBP to see if it at least works from a different one.